


A New Path

by SofiaDragon



Series: Another Turn of the Wheel [5]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Atlas Personality, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Grief/Mourning, Intersex Jotunn (Marvel), Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, Loki (Marvel) Gets a Hug, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Minor Character Death, No Beta, Odin (Marvel)'s Bad Parenting, Odin (Marvel)'s D- Parenting, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-World War I, Unreliable Narrator, no beta we die like men, oblivious loki
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 17:24:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20429681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofiaDragon/pseuds/SofiaDragon
Summary: Getting down to business. Loki starts down the path he intends to keep: traveling widely and building his strength to defend those he cares for. Winning means having the life he covets.Starts in 1918 AD, for the humans keeping track.





	1. Alfheim to Jotunheim

**Author's Note:**

> Keeping track of how to spell the things you made up yourself is hard, particularly when you had to take a break from writing due to health and family reasons.
> 
> Also, everyone needs to check out this AMAZING picture of Loki, which I found while looking to pay the post-tax in a facebook group. It is amazingly inspiring and fits so perfectly with the ice dragon section I wrote that I feel that I have to link to Dyana Wang's awesomeness because I absolutely have been inspired to write more after viewing her art.  
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/N5oEND

Loki had always found Alfheim beautiful. No matter what part of the realm a person visited, be it day or night, the sky was awash with color. Sometimes the sky was dominated by the gas giant the realm's inhabited worlds orbited, a wash of pastel rainbows in the day or glowing with vibrant bands of color in the night. At other times, the other moons would hang large and bright, the cities and landscapes on them marking them with interesting mixtures of geometric and natural patterns easily visible with even a simple spyglass. It was understandable to him that the peoples of Midgard considered Alfheim to be the realm of Heaven and called members of its primary race Angels. The moons of Alfheim varied but were generally lush. Be it in the form of dense forests or teeming oceans it was a realm full of life, but its seasons were extreme and out of sync with other realms and the abundant life meant abundant predatory creatures: plant, animal, and fungus. Beautiful did not mean safe.

The largest moon, particularly where the capitol was situated, was a very mountainous place. Snow-capped peaks reached up into the crisp blue sky, so tall that standing in the valleys one would think they would scrape the other moons. The valleys were dense with vegetation and flowers much of the year. Many times, when Loki wanted to get away from people in general, he would come and camp out in those unwelcoming heights. He lived off his supplies and the occasional animal caught in a snare, but wildlife in the thin atmosphere of the snow-capped peaks was relatively sparse. The Alf themselves considered such trips to be a rite of passage for young men and women alike, and respected him for the care he took in leaving no trace of his camp behind in the pristine landscape.

Tolfdir's passing was sudden. One morning, while he was home with his family, he simply failed to wake. Loki left for Alfheim as soon as he received the message, delivered by an enchanted bit of clockwork resembling a hawk that Loki had made for his beloved tutor centuries ago. The gatekeeper had not dawdled even to ask if Loki had permission as he usually did before opening the Bifrost for him. The funeral ceremony was complex and beautiful, with three generations of golden-skinned elves singing in harmony through their tears at the loss of their patriarch. Loki helped to lay his old master in the soil as was their tradition by joining his children and other apprentices in casting the spell to sprout the seed planted atop his grave. The sapling reached knee-height before sundown thanks to all the magic and would grow to be a fine addition to the grove of trees that served as a graveyard for Tolfdir's village.

Every so often he would realize how much time had passed since he'd rushed out of the feast hall to demand Heimdall send him to Alfheim immediately and wince, but it hadn't yet sparked a desire to return. In his darker moods Loki wondered if the golden-eyed soldier had expected Loki to never return. Loki'd kept himself busy so he would not have to think about the loss. At first, he was socializing with Tolfdir's other students and ended up spending a week in one of Alfheim's larger libraries researching a number of interesting historical accounts of great feats of magic. Then he followed a fairy back to one of Alfheim's lesser moons to be introduced to their Queen Maleficent before running at full speed away from the flirtatious woman all the way to Midgard. He was caught up in the end of "The Great War" and amused by the assertion made by several of the short-lived locals that there would never be another one after this. He popped from one nation to another to gather a proper account of what sort of conflict would cause mortals to proclaim that they had had enough death to cause their war-happy little nations to give up fighting one another. He found some "News Reels" that allowed him to watch recordings from the front lines.

Then Loki spent a good hour looking slack-jawed over a field full of muddy trenches called Verdun. The locals would fill them in soon, but for now they were busy celebrating the end of the war and holding close those who had come out of the trenches more or less in one piece. The ground still reeked of blood, the breeze carried distant celebrations of victory, and the estimated body count blazed fire in his head. He'd read that Asgard and many other advanced cultures shied away from projectile weaponry of the sort the mortals recently developed because it made war too messy to sustain. It took the honor and bravery out of battle by making the enemy a faceless silhouette a great distance away and rewarding snipers and assassins over more honorable forms of combat. Other cultures dropped projectile weapons when they went into space and realized that poking holes in their own ships while traveling through the vacuum of deep space with stray bullets and ricochets was a bad idea, moving to laser weapons that could easily damage flesh but had no mass or electron blasters that could be absorbed by a properly grounded hull structure. Trench warfare with this scale of devastation was something mentioned in the histories as a passing fad, glossed over as something that was less important than the honor of true warriors or the practicality of blades. The reality of it was unsettling.

He left Midgard the next day after re-stocking his dwindling supplies. Then he took up his current project and lost himself in it; surfacing from his calculations and sketches only long enough to feed and water himself.

Loki had learned a lot about masonry and architecture in the last seven years, and of course he'd had to get his magic into the mix. He'd explained to the masters teaching him that it made sense since his initial interest in such things came from his discovery of the circle on his property, but there was a bit of murmuring about his unorthodox ways just as there always was. It just made sense that studying the structure of a building would spawn ideas about the structure of certain spells. It was a new way of thinking about how things could be fit together and hold themselves up, after all. Once the methods and structures were in his mind, he could use them a metaphor to shape the metaphysical. Of course, they hadn't let Loki actually test-build any structures that were held up by a combination of magic and masonry to let him study how such things were blended. Even though many of the capitol's most impressive structures were very obviously a mix of magical and mundane construction, no one seemed willing to entertain the idea that the male builders of such structures would have needed at least novice level understanding of the crafts the women who wove the enchantments into them used and vice versa. Otherwise, the efficiency of the spell work or the integrity of the architecture would have to be compromised - and they very clearly were perfectly complementary.

Loki had no such issues with this project. No one was even bothering to try and rebuild this old bridge and his initial failures wouldn't disturb anyone. The towns on either side were completely abandoned and had been for quite some time given the amount of snow and the level of decomposition of some left-behind supplies. He'd cleared out one of the houses to use as his own shelter, dumping the refuse that had gathered into the smaller building next door. It was smaller, but close to the work site and rather cozy even if he had to make a few minor adjustments in order to live in the over-sized space comfortably. He could use magic to reach the higher shelves, but the step he put in allowed him to climb onto the worktop if he was too tired from his day's work. The furs piled up in the bedroom made up for the fact that the dip in the floor was designed for people twice his height or perhaps an entire family to share. A few spells and a jar of mage fire gave him light to work by and kept the temperature at a reasonable level provided he didn't revert to his Aesir form. The few cracks in the mostly subterranean structure were patched over in a way that wouldn't last but worked well enough to keep any stray draft or bugs out.

The first thing he did was examine the remains of the old bridge to see what had made it crumble. It had been made out of good stone, but ice was an unrelenting force. The decorative pattern on the sides and the seams between the stones had been sealed both with mortar and with seidr. When the source of the seidr failed, or in this case was taken to another realm, the omnipresent ice was able to get into the cracks, scour out the mortar, and wedge the stones apart. In conclusion, the bridge fell apart because some lazy Jotun builder decided that the magic holding a bridge together should be tied to an item of great power instead of generated on site. If all their infrastructure was like this, then it was no wonder the realm fell to ruins so easily. A single point of failure for structures like this was ridiculous.

It wasn't a large bridge, as such things went, but it was very wide. The gorge it spanned was ridiculously deep. It was also located and shaped so that no matter what path one took the only way from one side to the other was roughly equal to (or in the case of one northbound road, greater than) circumnavigation of the planetoid. Simply put, the best way to go west without the bridge was to go east until you came up on the other side. Not ideal, and it was little wonder that the two cliff-side villages couldn't hold out through the long list of things broken in the war to get their bridge fixed before everyone up and left for the much more manageable terrain on the other side of the planetoid. It was even possible that it wasn't two villages, but one with the bridge in the middle that was no longer self-sustaining when cut in half.

Two months in, it was the footings that made Loki reassess the logic behind the bridge's power source. They were massive and when provided with seidr they lit up to reveal why it needed so much power. The bridge had been bracing the sides of the gorge as well as providing passage. With the lines of power glowing clearly to his sight, he could see that the house he was staying in didn't used to be the closest one to the edge. The net cast by the footings went wide, reaching out to hold back a large section of land that no longer existed to the south.

He really shouldn't have gone down into the gorge, but he could fly and he was curious. He found the remains of the finer homes and great hall that would have been the center of the town. He also found the center of the bridge, which have a very interesting structure.

Loki moved two houses down and set up camp in a house that was clearly for a large extended family at some point, sealing off the rooms he didn't need with walls of ice. The next day he was back at work designing a new bridge, being careful to disconnect the circuits that produced the netting in the new design so nature could shift the gorge slowly over time rather than all at once during a power failure. Complacency was a killer, after all.

The young mage cast a spell to check the date and sighed. It had been almost a year now, and his family would be quite irate about his disappearance. Maybe. Perhaps they had gotten gradually more and more used to not having him around and so hardly noticed his long absence. He had tried to keep up regular socializing with his father over the years as Tolfdir had advised, but it was always just a bit too inconvenient. He'd tried setting up regular games of tafl or cards, but important meetings with political figures usually overrode them. He couldn't manufacture very many things to study with his father or topics of discussion deep enough to require sharing a lunch. Loki had managed to snag a few quests out from under Thor and brought back tokens from grateful villages or trophies from dangerous beasts that had developed a taste for sentient flesh. It earned him a couple words of praise from his father upon his return from the quest and not much else. Between those tokens and the retrieved trophies from the palace the cozy room right off the entrance of Eldred Hall was now impressively outfitted as a place he could invite people to share an afternoon with him. Invariably the politicians who came to such meetings left agreeing with whatever policy position Loki wanted them to have, which prevented the adventuring from being a complete waste of time. His plan to become a properly trained architect by studying stonework had gone nicely so far, but it was hard to say if that pleased Odin or not as the king hadn't mentioned anything about Loki's continued study of 'manly crafts' much at all.

Mother would miss him. That was always what drove him home, in the end, but he was so close to finishing.

The quarry where the stones for the original bridge had come from was still easily accessed after a few well-placed fireballs. It looked to be part of the local industry prior to the town's downfall. There were even some blocks already on rollers, abandoned with all the rest when the crumbling cliff side swallowed half the town. It had been hard work, but with some magic and liberal application of simple machinery he'd gotten all he needed gathered near the foot of the bridge so the he could shape them properly. He just had to figure out how to actually fit it all together without dropping anything down the gorge as there was a big difference between pushing the stones around on rollers and actually lifting them into place. He'd spent the last couple days mulling over that logistical problem while he finished cutting the last stones he needed to rebuild the bridge and welding the metal frame that would house the seidr-charged crystals and transmit the energy needed to keep it ice-free along the base of the structure. Being able to teleport and fly helped greatly.

For now, it was time to sleep. Loki flicked his wrist to extinguish the lights and settled into the furs. The Midgardian food he regularly left Jotunheim to purchase was filling and easily consumed. The manual labor and difficult engineering concerns exhausted his body and mind every day, ensuring dreamless sleep. His perimeter spells ensured that no predators would reach him even if the beasts of this realm somehow learned how to open doors. He slept well on a full stomach every day.

Loki woke with every nerve on edge. His perimeter spells were bent. Not broken as a wild animal would do, but shifted aside like a curtain. He could hear steady breathing from somewhere in the room. He laid still to feign sleep, materializing a dagger in his right hand, which was still buried under the furs. He couldn't hear any other sign from the intruder, so he would wait a moment more in case there was more than one before he…

"I have no intention of harming you," a low and vaguely feminine voice said. "I suppose watching you sleep was not the politest choice I could have made, but I hope you will forgive me given the circumstances. I am having some trouble believing you exist." Loki sprung up into a fighting stance, flaring the lights brightly a moment to startle the large Jotun. The Jotun anticipated the trick and simply blinked twice, effectively protecting her - zir - eyes from the worst of the flash.

"Why are you here?" Loki asked.

"There were reports of smoke seen in the distance. When I checked with our long-range defensive equipment, there were a few regularly occurring energy signatures that were odd, but small enough that they were being ignored. I came to see what was going on here, along with a few of my best warriors." Loki's heart sunk upon hearing that. He'd been caught by the Jotnar once, and while it hadn't been the most unpleasant experience of his life, he wasn't in a rush to enjoy their overprotective hospitality a second time. "Do you…? Your… Your name, little one," the Jotun asked, suddenly tripping over zir words, "What do you call yourself?"

"Logn," Loki lied.

"So, you_ are_ the same as the child that visited Tonder during the stormy season of the Capitol district?" Ze said, blinking a little as if ze was somehow emotionally invested in the situation. Loki looked over the Jotun before him, tracing the pattern of family lines that adorned the slim body. The father lines seemed familiar, but he couldn't quite place them. A relative of someone he'd met for certain, possibly of the child he'd saved given. That would make sense of the strangely strong emotion in the other's voice, at least, but the braiding was too complex on the leg and too smooth on the arms. The face was all contour lines, and even the mother lines were in sets of three instead of the ones and twos Loa's family had. Long, gently curved horns like those of a goat adorned Zir head. They looked remarkably like the helmet he'd been given when he came of age in Asgard.

"I am," Loki admitted. "I'm not hurting anyone by being here, this place was abandoned when I arrived."

"Why would you want to be alone?" Ze asked. Loki thought a moment. There was one good thing about interacting with the people of Jotunheim, and he might as well indulge in it. He'd remained unseen in his other trips, which meant enduring the harsh cold and being drained of seidr without much benefit beyond slaking his curiosity. He could be as honest as he pleased with these people an no one would fault him for the bend of this thoughts, given that he was considered a child and had a well-documented mental illness here.

"My master, the one who guided me over the last few centuries as I learned to use seidr properly, passed away from old age. I went to attend the funeral with his children and grandchildren and then I went for a walk after. I haven't wanted to go back," Loki said with a shrug. "Well, I have, actually, some nights more than others, but I'm not done here, and I want to finish more than I want to go home."

"And all of this?" Ze asked, gesturing to Loki's schematics. He'd left a few out for easy reference, but more had been laid out on the floor than what he'd been using.

"Something to do; something to think about instead of other things." Loki shrugged again. "Something I want to finish before I go back."

"You want to finish building a bridge, so you will feel less grief over the loss of your mentor?" Ze asked slowly.

"Yes, but recently I was thinking that I might not be able to finish. I could move and shape the stones as long as I used what was left in the quarry and my own tools, but there isn't sort of crane or other means of moving the stones into place now that I made them. I spent most of yesterday moving them around and double-checking the cuts, but I don't think there is much more I can do on my own. I hadn't really come up with a viable solution to that, yet."

"You are ridiculous and impossible. The longer I speak to you the surer I am that I have been drugged and this is all some fever dream." The other Jotun scrubbed at zir face. "Perhaps we can help you build your bridge, and when it is done - if it holds or does not - you will travel with us as we complete a survey of this district."

"Obedience in exchange for a favor?" Loki summarized, speaking slowly to stall while he mulled over the offer. It would be nice to know if his design worked. Before he had any time to think, he was answered.

"No," the Jotun said firmly. "I offer you the means to satisfy your grief in the manner you wish to, and in exchange you will follow us. I will not cage you; I will not demand obedience; I only ask that we travel in the same direction for a time. What you do after that will be for your own heart to decide." Another offer of adoption, and this one after only a few minutes in the same room. Was this just how adult Jonar reacted to an unaccompanied child?

"I don't need to be adopted."

"Of course, you don't need it," ze assured. "You have a home waiting for you, wherever you decide that may be. You could leave this place now, if you like, but if we help you with the bridge, I will want you to stay with us until the survey is complete."

"How long does this _survey_ take?" Loki asked. The horned Jotun smiled brightly at him.

"That is a very good question. We have come here first, due to the unusual reports of course, but this is a standard patrol of the district that collects census data and requests for the crown. An exact count of the nights is not possible, but it usually takes two weeks. Going out of order will make it slightly less efficient, perhaps an extra day and night total added travel time. This province is smallest by more than half than the two neighboring ones that complete the district, with the eastern one - relative and not galactic east, these three planetoids are locked in a stable orbit as a unit - slightly smaller than the western," the thin Jotun explained. Loki nodded along in understanding. It was a bit more than was done by the regular patrols on Asgard. Each lord handled the count of his own people, and what would be the point of spoiling the count with Heimdall and the other means of magically tracking the population? Some oversight by the capitol would certainly be needed absent such ability.

"So, you will have the soldiers help me build the bridge and I will stay with you for two weeks, give or take whatever delays naturally pop up in the patrol?" Loki summarized. "Then I am free to go wherever I want."

"I have hopes, but yes, you are free to continue your wandering if you need to do so."

"You know my name, what is yours?" The Jotun startles at the question, looking pained.

"My name means 'eccentric moon' and I have been titled Prince," the Jotun responded, zir tone gentle against the formal phrasing. "Prior to dedicating my life to my children, I was titled Commander and led two of the armies of Jotunheim. These days, I go on the surveys to keep myself sharp and otherwise remain in the capitol where I train young shifters and changelings like yourself." Loki's jaw dropped. "I am, of course, perfectly willing to include you in our shape-changing drills as we travel. It would be more difficult, though not impossible, to bring you along if you refuse to use your abilities in front of us as you hid them in Tonder, but I should hope you would enjoy stretching your wings and claws with us."

"Yes, please," Loki said, slightly dazed by his luck, because he'd have to be every color of fool to pass up such an offer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some thoughts on my worldbuilding: The intersex Jotun people are not "both" genders, but are instead genderfluid. The portion of the population who aren't, simply lack the low-level shapeshifting ability that roughly a third of the population has that lets them shift from male to female and back at will. They have both sets of bits, but both sets don't work at the same time to avoid certain unpleasant inbreeding options, much the way many plants will produce pollen either before or after the pistil is ready to be pollinated. I'm going to see if I can work that distinction more blatantly into the story somehow since I feel like only half of my readers picked up on the 'you get to choose' aspect of things. This is why their culture still has some loose gender roles.
> 
> Laufey was female when young but switched to male after Loki's birth and stayed that way. Farbuti generally preferred being male when ze was younger but was willing to be female for a while to have more kids and started switching back and forth regularly since the births of Byleistr and Helbindi since ze surprized zirself by how much ze enjoyed motherhood. Their physical state does not generally change how they choose to be addressed unless they are making a major change to their lifestyle, and royalty uses male forms dure to inter-realm politics in general and the patriarchy of the Dark Elves and Asgard in particular.


	2. Eccentric Prince Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki learns a few useful and not so useful things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please remember that Jotnar **do not** consider it rude if you don't introduce yourself. Your identity and lineage are literally written across your face. Also, Loki should be the only person (including all of you, dear readers) who does not know who this exceptionally huge Jotun is.

While he munched on milk-soaked granola and dried fish, occasionally pausing to explain some part of the schematics he'd drawn up to a slightly shell-shocked circle of adult Jotnar, Loki mulled over his options. The Prince had not told Loki his name, at least not exactly. 'Eccentric Moon' could be mushed together a number of ways to make a passable name both phonetically and using their symbolic writing system, but it likely followed the same twisted logic as every other culture-based name meaning and had nothing to do with how it was written and everything to do with some ancient story or historical event. Guessing correctly what zir name was would be difficult, but it was clearly some sort of challenge and Loki enjoyed games of wit. He would likely have to catch it being said by one of the soldiers. In the meantime, he could call zir 'Prince' or, if he wanted to be manipulative, 'moon.'

Calling someone Moon was, in the Jotun language, a genderless way to refer to one's biological father. It was also a bit childish, a mispronunciation of the proper word for one’s sire, something said by adults only if there was a very close bond between parent and child. At least, that was how Loki understood it. It would be an easy manipulation to start out keeping formal address to the Prince and slowly start calling him Moon here and there. He did wonder who the Prince was. If he was A Prince of the Realm, he would have to be Laufey's sibling or uncle to have that title. If he was not, then he might be a high-ranking noble from a house that also used the titles of Prince and Princess. Each district was semi-autonomous and the independence (and mild disrespect to the crown during their single conversation) shown by the Baron of Tonder made Loki hesitant to assume that branches of the royal family wouldn't use such high titles. Provided none of them ever claimed to be King, such titles given to those who were at the front of the line of secession made some sense.

Building the bridge went rather quickly with the stones were laid out in the order they needed to be laid. Who needs powerful machinery when you have two dozen adult Jotnar adept at altering their physical form? The shifters bent and twisted themselves like plants in a high-speed recording, the changelings took forms with claws or wings, and all together they used flashes of seidr to communicate simple ideas _while in their alternate forms_ to ensure there were no collisions or mistakes. Loki needed to know how that was done, as he couldn't perform any magic while in animal form.

The bridge was complete before it was time for lunch. The soldiers spent the after-midnight hours moving slowly through the area to asses it for resettlement. Loki stuck close to them, watching them carefully and drinking in the seidrman warriors (and wasn't that a thing he used to think he'd invented) as they worked with muscle and spell. Occasionally they would speak to him, but never as if speaking to a child. They asked him what he thought of the buildings and waited patiently for Loki to actually check them properly before giving an answer. In his answers, he used his illusions to show the structures, complete with any cracks or flaws he could detect. They used feminine pronouns for him, and it felt perfectly natural for them to do so. They all camped in the village Loki had been living in that day with plans to set out first thing the next evening.

The bridge held. They walked over it on their way to begin the survey.

* * *

Loki had been to Jotunheim a few times since his first disastrous visit. He'd scouted around the edges of towns the way he'd originally intended to do, checking to see if Tonder was the exception or the rule. It was a shockingly diverse realm. The districts were laid out to contain a few similar planetoids each, and the culture varied from location to location almost as much as Midgard did. Some of the inhabited asteroid belt was warm enough for liquid water on the surface year-round and others relied on geothermal activity, likely kept active by the tidal forces of the gas giants orbiting their pale blue star, to sustain life. The Capitol and Plains districts were great frozen wastes with deep cave networks full of life. This was the Tro district, which was rich in tin and other light metals as well as an excellent place to quarry strong stone. The local vegetation was mostly a rather stunning metallic lichen and a lot of soggy moss and the animal life capped out at some rather tasty dog-sized insects. The people in the villages greeted the warriors warmly and, particularly once they spotted Loki, seemed overjoyed to see a new face. Paperwork changed hands and they moved on rather swiftly.

Three nights of this saw them climbing up a rather steep crag to reach the highest elevation on the small world, with the Prince urging Loki to take the form of a local goat-like creature with spiked hooves to make the climb less difficult. It took a few tries to make the change since the form was so unfamiliar, he certainly hadn't come across any of those creatures in his travels, and Loki popped back into his Jotun form a few times when something felt off and his instincts startled him out of the imperfect transformation. The careful and attentive guidance was much like Tolfdir's early lessons. The Prince seemed to realize that Loki's emotionless mask was just an illusion after a while but said nothing. He did pick Loki up at one point, when his footing was unsteady and it could be excused as needed assistance, and held for just long enough to count as a comforting cuddle before setting Loki back on the cliff face and encouraging him to try again.

The crag was topped with a small settlement crowded around a loading dock for transport through the void of space that separated the provinces. There wasn't enough vegetation or other fuel to feed any heavy industry in Tro, so actually processing the metals here was out of the question. Instead, raw ore had to be transported to warmer climates where fuel for the forge and food for the workforce was more abundant. This was a problem that Loki had seen time and again when he visited other areas of Jotenheim, and it was the reason why the Casket of Ancient Winters really was needed as a local power source.

Jotunheim lacked any sort of efficient fuel for space-faring transport.

Sure, they could turn some of the cave-dwelling vegetation into liquid biofuel of some sort. They could cut down some of the silvery trees in the Ironwood to make charcoal. Hydraulic power was easy to create, and geothermal was what kept most cities and larger towns working. However, one could not power a transport ship using such methods. The boiler needed would be too heavy to ever lift itself and a worthwhile payload no matter its construction. The biofuel wasn't of high enough quality to use in a rocket. Radioactive minerals were shockingly scarce given the abundance of other metals, but it seemed that the entire realm kept to the lighter portions of the periodic table. Plenty of titanium, copper, and quicksilver; but lead, bismuth, and heavier elements were nearly nonexistent. Without the Casket as a centralized power source, which was made eons ago in a forgotten process, there were few methods of travel available for bulk goods and none that were up to Loki's standards of efficiency. There was talk of mining the gas giants for hydrogen, but their massive gravity was too much for their current fleet of ships to combat, and not worth the risk. There was one method that Loki had not encountered before, however, and it sparked his curiosity in all the best ways when the Prince described how they would be visiting the other planetoids in the district.

The pathways between the three planetoids had collapsed much the same as the stone bridge had: the metaphysical portal between the three chunks of rock crumbled when the power source that sustained them was disconnected. There had been efforts to build a physical connection between the three planetoids in the early days after the war, since they orbited together as a stable unit and could be made into a triangle spinning along among the asteroid belt. That work was halted by the crown when the additional mass being imported to build the metal scaffolding threatened to destabilize some nearby asteroids, and there were already a good number of rogue asteroids already causing problems due to the collapse of other infrastructure throughout the disk-shaped realm. Mages were employed to man a few transport ships, powering them with seidr and what little radioactive materials they could collect from the space dust, but they were very limited in their capacity. However, the Prince and his warriors could transform themselves into great beasts to move between one planetoid to the next through the vacuum of space with the aid of a fancy trampoline. In short, the best way for the warriors to move from one part of the realm to the other was to turn into ice dragons and _jump_.

That day, Loki learned that Jotnar could survive in the vacuum of space for up to a month, provided they entered a hibernation-like state, and could remain active in deep space for a full day before their condition started to degrade. Symbiotic bacteria provided them with an internal oxygen source, their metabolisms could slow down to nearly nothing, and the pressure (or lack thereof) didn't bother their slightly waxy skin. Loki was momentarily panicked by the thought that he didn't have that symbiotic oxygen source. The Prince chuckled indulgently and had their medic test Loki for an adequate level of the necessary bacteria. He had either lived long enough in the hut to have picked it up or his changeling nature worked its magic on his gut flora as well - which opened a new line of questions which he fired off at the warriors. They answered well, though only the medic had any in-depth knowledge of the particulars. For once, Loki's own knowledge base proved to be so completely inadequate that even the all-speech couldn't help him with the technical terminology, leaving the liquid words untranslated in a mush of sounds. Loki admitted he hadn't followed the last couple minutes of the explanation. He had followed along well enough to be praised for it, but was told that without a century or so of study in a field that was highly specific and not terribly useful out of context he would have to content himself with trusting his instincts. Then he received a simplified 'it just works' style dismissal, and went to practice turning into a dragon for a few hours with a few other changelings while the Prince and a few of his men had a meeting with the young Count who ran this province.

It was prudent to keep one's eyes and mouth closed as much as possible and to avoid breathing all the way out when traveling through the void this way, but that was more caution than necessity for a short trip. The dead silence was unnerving and the idea that there was nothing but the strength of the shape-shifted warriors pushing them through space with very little navigational correction possible was terrifying, but the flight was physically comfortable. The couple of hours of vacuum he experienced while clinging to the dragon scales of the Prince were stressful but also exhilarating. He hadn't managed to hold the form for more than ten minutes during practice, and so had been instructed to form a bubble of ice around himself after he was sat on the larger Jotun's shoulder for this trip. The Prince assured him that they would have ample time for him to practice the dragon form before the next jump and that he was looking forward to seeing Loki cross deep space as part of their formation instead of as a passenger. When it was over Loki hoped aloud that actually jumping with them, rather than just plastering himself to the Prince's side with a paranoid amount of ice, would make the experience less terrifying. Privately, Loki thought that climbing Yggdrasil's branches was a far better method of travel in every way, shape and form. They really needed to get the intra-realm pathways fixed.

Two weeks passed quickly, with Loki learning tips about his changeling abilities from warriors who shared both his inborn gift and learning to channel his seidr while in the form of a mundane animal. The Prince proved easily manipulated, nearly moved to tears the first time Loki 'slipped up' and called him Moon. The Jotun noble was truly massive while asleep, a shifter rather than a changeling, but shrunk himself down as soon as he awoke to be of a more average height and much thinner build. Many of the lessons carried the same theme from the massive Jotun, which he repeated often: _It is very easy to diminish oneself, but becoming more than you were is difficult and sometimes painful._ The stretched-out ache Loki felt after several hours as an ice dragon for the first time bore out the truth of that at face value, though it was also philosophical and wise in ways that startled the Asgardian Prince.

How long would it take for the knowledge that Jotnar aren't the brainless child-eating monsters he'd grown up believing them to be to sink into his thick skull, anyway? Loki was being as dense as Thor, reverting to his previous beliefs after a few years of only seeing Jotnar at a distance when he knew those assumptions to be lies and propaganda. He was certain he'd removed all the mind magic Odin had placed on him when he first broke through the bindings on his changeling nature. There was no reason why he should return to thinking of these people as less than animals, yet he kept underestimating them. It was even more frustrating because he was aware of the dissonance in his own mind and yet continuously failed to correct it.

The Jotun Prince also insisted that Loki talk about his dead Master from time to time. At first, he deflected as much as he could, but slowly he started to talk about Tolfdir. How the old Alf treated him, how well he listened and how carefully he guided. The comradery he felt with Tolfdir's other pupils, distant as it was with the infrequency of their interaction. He described in more detail some of his earlier lessons, where he made multiple mistakes and was frustrated beyond words before his Master talked him down over tea and sandwiches. With a spyglass and some signaling, the Jotun Noble confirmed that the bridge was still holding with no sign of failure a couple times, and assured Loki that such a thing was an excellent way to remember the man who taught him so much. It was a good work, and grief put to such use was nothing to be ashamed of even if he hadn't been afforded the good fortune of the chance to see the work completed.

Loki remained with the Prince and his men as he promised he would, and even followed them for a third heart-pounding jump back toward the capitol district. The survey was over, and he'd generously remained for an extra two nights to show his appreciation for the lessons. His magic woke him in the middle of the day when most were asleep and he scuttled off, cloaking himself in illusion to slip unnoticed past the watchman on duty. He disliked that the noble seemed to have memorized every detail of whatever report had been written about his stay in Tonder and had never gotten a straight answer when he asked how the noble had known Loki was a changeling. 'I think it is fairly obvious if you think on it a moment, my little Starlight,' and a lot of chuckling was not an acceptable explanation. He did seem able to melt the heart of any Jotun he came across, which was interesting and certainly useful while traveling in this realm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Farbauti is a moon of Saturn with an odd orbit. I chose to have zir name translate that way instead of the much more violent storm-themed meanings that can be derived from Norse/Germanic cultures it originates from. It would be a bit odd thematically to have Loki's dad named any variation of "Lightning Strike" after all.


	3. Home Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki returns to Asgard and the neverending political dance of being the second son to the king.

Loki returned to Asgard as if he had never left, with no fanfare or announcement. It was a Tuesday, so he simply took in the rundown of what he missed from Sven and buckled down to get some work done. He does need a few large meals to get back to his normal strength, but the rich food he'd been getting from Midgard and Alfheim kept him from wasting away too much during his long stay in the icy, entropy-soaked realm. Loki focuses on tending to his holding during the day and otherwise takes it easy, soaking in the tub and lounging about in his bedroom in the evening to rest up after the long trip. Three days into the backlog of paperwork an urgent summons to the court arrived. He dressed and left in a hurry as soon as Sven brought it to him and made it to the palace just after lunch. The King's Counsel was all present, ruining their Friday afternoon plans. What an excellent way to stack the mood of the room against Loki before he'd even arrived.

"Loki," Odin growled from the throne. Loki came to a stop and bowed as was proper.

"Father, to what do I owe this summons?" Loki said with mild curiosity.

"Where have you been?"

"I attended the funeral of my former tutor, Master Tolfdir, on Alfheim," Loki said simply.

"And the rest of the last year?" the old man barked.

"Mourning the death of my dearest friend," Loki said boldly. He continued speaking right when Odin was prepared to answer. "I built a bridge."

"You built a bridge?" the All-father repeated slowly, his eye wide.

"I had been discussing my architectural studies and how the magical and mundane portions of a structure can interface with Master Tolfdir regularly since I found the amphitheater on my property. Surely you noticed that I was traveling to Alfheim at least twice a year for the last five to speak with him? His health had been in decline for some time, so I did not bother him with such things as much as I would have wanted to, but he made it clear that I was always welcome in his home and available for me to come to him with my questions," Loki explained, his every word calculated. "I had been drawing up schematics for a project before his death. I'd thought there was time enough that he could see the plans completed. After his passing I set about cutting the stones."

"You built a bridge on your own, to honor his memory?" Odin was visibly shocked, and it irritated Loki. Of course Tolfdir was important to him. Why should that be a surprise?

"The work was satisfying, and it wasn't until I'd cut all the stones and laid them out in their pattern that I sought out the help of local muscle to see it completed. Two hands could never be enough for such a task, after all. It should stand untouched by weather or wear for at least the length of Tolfdir's life, and much longer if it is properly maintained. I do believe I mentioned the idea for the project when we last had lunch together, though at the time I was not thinking of it as a memorial."

He didn't really want to do this, but Tolfdir had been nagging him incessantly about his relationships with his kin since he moved out of the palace, and the three letters on top of the pile of urgent correspondence Sven had handed him upon his return had been from Grandmaster Tyr and General Njor. The posturing they had done in the wake of Thor being named Odin's heir had only delayed their troubles, and with Loki gone the distraction of him acting older than his years left the gossip mills with only Thor to focus on. Thor had been in a dangerous mood while Loki was away, and it was doing a lot of damage to their efforts to squash the hints of rebellion that had been plaguing the realm for the last decade. Brawls in taverns, a few quests to hunt down bandits on Vanaheim that ended with more of the criminals dead than arrested, a nasty misunderstanding when one of the Jarl's daughters came to visit Loki for intellectual reasons and Thor assumed Loki had disappeared because he'd tried to woo a married woman, and a smattering of complaints from people Thor and his friends harassed thinking they knew how to find Loki when he didn't reappear for the Harvest Festival. All things that Loki would have either talked Thor down from or things that would have faded from popular memory with a few whispers in the right ears or flashy distractions to focus on.

It was upsetting to see that the old men were right: the people of Asgard could and would be just as cruel to Thor with their gossip as soon as Loki stopped falling on his own blades or rejecting his appointed position as scapegoat. Without him around to act as the vessel where Thor kept his better judgment, his arrogance came through harsh, raw, and unfiltered. Most odd to Loki, it was the young men that Thor took with him on one campaign in particular that were the most vocal detractors according to the letters he'd received. This was the rare sort of mission Odin would have given directly to Loki or else insisted that Loki go with his brother, as the criminals they were looking for used strong illusions to keep themselves hidden in a large area of protected woodland with no roads, maps, or other obvious landmarks. Without Loki's magic available to help navigate or locate the small bandit camp, Thor sought to flush out the group of petty thieves and squatters the old fashioned way with a line of men combing through the land in a search pattern. The men he used were Vanir tradesmen and merchants from the local towns, not trained soldiers, but Thor was too impatient and prideful to go back to Asgard empty-handed and get a troop of warriors to do the work. The Vanir he conscripted to 'defend their homes,' being separated so strictly by caste through bloodline and education as their culture dictated, were not able to perform well outside of their specialty as a rule. Men who had never entered the wilds of the forest and barely left their forges, tanning benches, or farms in their adult lives were sent crashing through the trees in a haphazard fashion and chastised for their poor performance throughout. In the end, Odin sent a troop of properly trained warriors to replace them after checking in on Thor's progress at the end of a week. Njor noted that Thor had been criticized by Odin for mismanaging the search, but privately with only a couple people aware of the chastisement in a bid to downplay the mistake. From what Tyr had gotten out of Thor when he asked about the quest, whatever was said boiled down to a simple strategic error in Thor's eyes. Crashing through the forest, ignoring the damage to the protected land, was fine if it was done quickly enough to catch the bandits; however, the townsmen had been too slow for the ploy to be effective on illusionists, and speedier or quieter men were needed to catch the cowards who were hiding behind their women's magic. Vanaheim, as a whole, was quite unhappy with the results. Most of the 'bandits' were killed despite their primary crime being squatting and a decent chunk of forest was damaged by the marching men and the lightning blasts.

The All-father was aging, his chosen heir a violent fool who spent much of the last year picking fights for some reason, and if nothing changed there would be rebellion among the non-warrior classes on Vanaheim if not Asgard itself. Perhaps even originating among the merchants, which would be far worse than a peasant uprising, and with other noble houses looking to install their own sons upon the throne instead of simply trying to force Odin to abdicate to a supposedly malleable younger prince. With the endless delays to the tour of the realm Loki kept trying to plan, only for those plans to be thwarted by Thor's impulsiveness scattering months of meticulous planning like overturned game pieces in occasionally very public ways, the common wisdom was that Loki was being driven out of the royal family for fear he would interfere with Thor's ascendance. That idea was causing extreme displeasure by the more conservative minds in the realm, who thought that shunning one child to benefit the other was intolerable, and stirring the more radical, who actively wanted a witch-king to bring the warrior class down a few pegs. When even the people who _don't_ want Loki on the throne start talking about how poorly Thor must handle delicate politics if he needs to expel his brother from the capital to stand on his own, things are getting out of hand.

The only way he saw to avoid a pointless rebellion which would only end with a victorious hero Thor as Crowned Prince several decades earlier than planned was to play the petulant child; to turn all the woes of the crown into family drama lapped up by gossips and cooed over by all the mothers of the realm and let it all rain down on his own head. Tyr and Njor could disagree with that tactic as much as they liked, but Loki could take a few hits provided that they were aimed at his own immaturity. He certainly wasn't weak enough to be hurt by a bunch of twittering gossips calling him childish when he was still centuries away from being a full adult in the first place.

"The boy was grieving," Tyr said, out of turn. "Are we seriously assembled here to pass judgment on how a boy not yet a thousand years old chose to keep himself busy after the death of the man closest to him?"

"Take care of your words," General Tult warned, smirking as he saw the chance to make the rumors worse for Loki. "Unless you mean to imply something improper between the prince and the Alf?"

"Nothing improper," Tyr said with an easy shrug, and Loki braced himself. Odin could see it coming as well, his grip on Gungir tight enough to make the lines on his hands go smooth, but nothing could stop the General from speaking. "Only that Odin found the boy a father figure whose talents matched his interests and wasn't too busy ruling a realm to keep track of him. I can't count the number of times I have personally seen Loki ask for some of the King's time and found himself in need of some other person to discuss his thoughts with. For the last three centuries Master Tolfdir has been Loki's closest confidant. The old Alf certainly didn't have much else pressing to bring him to Asgard after the Prince earned his Mastery of Battle Magic, yet he came to stay here for at least half the year every year without fail, dragging his family along for the Prince to sing songs with in the Palace gardens. A year of mourning, away from the capitol where it would be condemned as improper by idiots who never saw the two of them together, is hardly out of the ordinary."

"The construction took longer than anticipated, I didn't plan to be away so long," Loki spoke into the silence, hoping to deflect the blow somewhat.

"If anyone here is going to chide you for staining some blueprints with tears publicly or otherwise they deserve every ounce of wrath their Queen will bring down on them for it," Njor said just loudly enough to carry through the room. Then, louder, "Construction projects have an inherent unpredictability. Can you say it was done well and not rushed?"

"I can," Loki replied calmly.

"Still no beard on your chin," Njor observed. "None are hurt, there is no grave threat to the realm, and as far as I can tell Loki has been back and at work seeing to his holding - which is also unharmed due to his prudent manner of managing the land and the legally mandated supervisor he has in place for just this sort of youthful action - for several days now. So, I second Tyr's notion that this room is entirely too crowded. This isn't a matter for the council, nor even for a King. If Odin Borson wishes to punish his adolescent son for staying out past his curfew he can do it without taking me away from my family on a Friday afternoon." With that the old man stood and started pushing his way past the other noblemen seated in his row to get to the door. Tyr also stood, though he waited calmly to see if the man on his left would budge. A few others wavered, but none were so bold as to actually try to leave before the All-father had dismissed them.

"General Njor," Odin boomed from the throne, the acoustic effect of the raised seating further enhancing what was likely magically amplified to begin with. "You have not been dismissed. This is a serious matter, as Loki has a holding that has gone neglected all the time he was away."

"Oh, don't even try to pretend you aren't afraid to talk to him," Njor said, tipping his head back with an exaggerated sigh so irreverent and disrespectful that it dropped Loki's jaw. "I've known you since we were both in the nursery, and this has nothing to do with politics. You fucked up your relationship with your child. Fix it or live with the mess, but don't call us all back into an extra session to try and scare the boy into place for you. He's at least three centuries too old to be paraded through the halls for this sort of disobedience - he lives in his own house for Norn's sake - and more than two centuries shy of when a long absence like this will be a matter of law. Even then, something would have needed to go wrong due to negligence to call a Lord of a Holding before us for censure, and nothing has."

"That is entirely beside the point," Odin shouted. "He has neglected his lands for nearly a full year, and abandoned his duties to the realm at large."

"If you absolutely must have my opinion before I go," Tyr said with a bow just this side of mocking, "Then I am sure everyone in this room saw you decline Prince Loki's requests, even as unobtrusive as they were. You would part ways more often then walk together out of the room when business was concluded, and if any of those gathered here think on it a moment you will know the truth of the matter. Sometime before the fifth time a father denies a request from his son to share lunch is usually when he realizes that something is amiss that needs his attention." The old warrior shook his head, looking sad. "How could you not know how your son would react to the death of Master Tolfdir, when he spoke about his mentor's failing health so often and was so obviously troubled by it?"

"I never heard the Prince say a word about it!" Tult said with a dismissive wave. A murmur started up in the crowd of advisors as many of them agreed with Tyr's comments over Tult's and started talking about specific moments from the past few years with those who didn't.

"I never heard of the young Prince asking you to share a pint and a game of cards," Njor's voice rose above the rest as he walked away toward the door. "He's a very reserved young man. People who don't talk to him directly rarely know a true thing about him." This kicked off even more murmuring, and more people gathered their papers into leather cases.

"Get out, all of you," Odin ordered quickly, enraged at the spreading mutiny as more of the counsel started to stand and unwilling to let them leave without permission. Njor was only a few steps from the door as it was. Odin scrubbed his brow, looking down at his lap and likely calculating how much trouble Tyr and Njor's stunt would cause down the line. The respect of the noble houses was the power that held up the throne, after all. No King could rule if all of his subjects turned against him. Tyr caught Loki's eye, and very belatedly the Prince closed his mouth. The Grandmaster made a gesture where Loki could see, but out of view of the throne. One of the hand signals used in battle that all warriors learned:_ 'Obey.'_ It was ridiculous. It was unthinkable. It was beautiful. So he did it.

Loki walked out with the rest of them. It was exactly what his father asked for, after all.

"He'll call you back in there any second," Tyr spoke quickly into Loki's ear, heedless of the many eyes on them. "Just try to remember that there is no good you can do for the realm by stabbing yourself in the foot. You deserved time to grieve, and no honest man can claim he hasn't cried over the loss of a mentor. Twisting yourself into a shape you were never meant to take to appear that cold-hearted because Odin or anyone else thinks it might imply some greater strength would have been pointless and counter-productive. Also, I know you hate being told things you already know, but a reminder that you do have people you can lean on seems in order. I know you long thought that I favored Thor over you because I spent more time with him when I was teaching you both, but you must know by now that that isn't accurate. I never needed to worry about you becoming careless with your weapons, after all. Not when it took so long to get you to stop endlessly preparing and just strike already. Finally, the conspicuous absence of your Mother is currently being corrected. Expect reinforcements imminently."

"Thank you." Was all Loki could say, because Odin was already calling him back into the throne room.


	4. Family Squabbles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those who keep up with the comments know I have had a few severe health issues in the last two years, and with world events being what they are I'm glad to be writing about a fictional universe. I and my family are well and are taking steps to stay that way. Thank you for the concern some of my readers have expressed. I do apologize for the long wait, I tend to write the most when I am happy and, well, the stress monster is real and feeds off political Facebook posts.

"Loki," Odin said, his voice echoing in the empty hall as his wayward young son approached the dais. Loki knelt, having no clue what the proper response should be and defaulting back to the etiquette lessons he began learning before he could write. He heard his father sigh. "Do you have anything to say about your absence over the last year and a half?"

"I left when called to morn Tolfdir's passing. I thought to distract myself from his death after the funeral concluded by traveling and thought to amuse myself on Midgard, but that realm is a very unpleasant place for one looking to avoid thoughts of mortality," Loki said plainly, without moving from his place. "Particularly since they have just invented trench warfare and much of that realm is blood-soaked to such a degree that even the most seasoned warriors would say is excessive."

"So you built a bridge on Midgard?"

"No, I left that realm quickly. It was unsettling, and I was still in no state to come home to my duties here. There was a broken bridge, long disused that spanned a gorge between two abandoned old quarries, that I had been aware of for a few years now. Not important enough to matter if I failed, but still a suitable test of my abilities. A remote, uninteresting place, but I had been sharing my thoughts on the project with Master Tolfdir for a couple years and it seemed a good way to occupy my mind and hands."

"You cut the stones yourself, you said?" Odin didn't sound angry, just curious. As if it was a normal conversation and they weren't in the throne room with Gungnir held high in his hand and Loki kneeling at his feet.

"I did. The work was… good," he found himself paraphrasing the words of the Jotun Prince. "Grief put to good use, practical yet consuming. Regular periods where the motions of the body were simple and repetitive to allow for the mind to untangle what needed to be processed, and others where my attention could not be split for even a moment."

"And you earned yourself some fine payment I assume. " Odin said it as if it was such an obvious thing, that Loki would have ensured he gained some great reward from his work.

"Some study with the changelings who lived nearby," Loki said smoothly, fabricating a suitable lie from the threads of the truth. "Also, the use of their muscle for the construction. It is easy to diminish oneself, but much harder to become a larger creature. They showed me how to make such transitions more seamless as they became large beasts of burden."

"You can become something… very large, now?" Odin asked slowly, curiosity tempered with no small amount of some negative emotion.

"No, actually," Loki admitted. "Not for more than a minute or two, in any case. I am still a novice in many respects, but at least I have the theory now." He risked a chuckle and continued. "At times, the explanation was so beyond me that I could hear only twittering fey words that the All-speech could not translate into anything I understood. It took some time for me to learn enough to communicate efficiently on the topic, and by then the bridge was built and the changelings had other duties calling them just as I did. We used no machinery and very little magic in the assembly, just the strength of our bodies to lay the stones in place."

"That… was a constructive use of your time, yes, but you can not just disappear without warning and leave your other duties behind for such a long period of time," Odin said slowly. He fidgeted slightly, but otherwise seemed unmoved.

"I suppose I could have done something else, but there was no need of my skills here in any way that would allow me the time I needed to think. I did need that time and… well…" Loki trailed off, shifting a bit and being as obviously uncomfortable as possible. It wasn't difficult to show the emotion, as the prospect of using the raw truth to explain his absence to his father was not his habit. "I believe you and Mother would have given me the chance to grieve, and perhaps Thor as well with some well-meaning teasing, but there are many others who I do not think would have allowed me that courtesy. Thor's close friends have always derided my close friendship with my old master, as have many others in the court, and I would not have been able to avoid them. I had no desire to be chastised or ridiculed for weeping over the death of a man I respected, so I did not give them the opportunity."

"To grieve the death of a good man is proper."

"What is a good man? So many consider all male sorcerers to be ergi, no matter that he had a wife and large family. Can an ergi be considered worthy of such honors? They certainly doubt so when speaking about me, and I have fought as their shield brother many times. I know these people well, father. They would not have left me in peace if I was available to mock." Loki stood up as he spoke, attempting to make it at least appear as if this was a normal conversation.

"Withdrawing yourself from conflict altogether is not…"

"I am no coward that runs from a fight I need to engage in!" Loki shouted, then tempered his words. He spoke quickly to try and cover for the outburst. "Is it cowardice to lock my door at night, or shall I invite thieves into my home so I can vanquish them in combat? I did not think I could grieve here without having to defend myself, and his family deserved time without guests around, so I went elsewhere. I became engrossed in a project and decided to see it to completion. Nothing happened where I was needed as far as my reports show, and while I missed a few annual festivals there seems to be little consequence for my absence from my hold. I only had one Master that I remained close to after my tutoring ended, this won't happen a second time."

"It all seems perfectly reasonable to me," Mother's voice filled the silence at the end of Loki's frustrated rant.

"Mother," Loki greeted her warmly, stepping up to meet her halfway between the side door behind the Throne she had arrived through. He was immediately folded into a tight hug. She kissed Loki's cheek then drew back to look him directly in the eye.

"Send. A. Note. Home." The all-mother said firmly, each word punctuated with a tap to his breastbone. "It is not a revolutionary concept and I should not need to remind you that mail exists. When you are away and get delayed, send a note home."

"Yes, mother," Loki agreed. "I am sorry I made you worry."

"It won't happen again," Mother said, her left hand still holding onto Loki's arm with a vice-like grip that contrasted her otherwise loving attention.

"No, Mother, it will not," Loki assured her.

"That is that then," she said and turned to address her husband. Loki noted the Thor had also appeared, stepping up beside the throne Odin now stood in front of. "For future reference, if you neglect to mention that you plan to discipline our son via public humiliation over a minor offense without speaking to him about the circumstances first, then I will not wait until the room is empty to come in here and show you how much of a fool you are being. I believe General Njor and Grandmaster Tyr had that covered for today?" The Queen directed her question at Loki.

"They seemed to be very concerned about Thor as well," Loki chose to answer indirectly. "They know I support Father's decision to put Thor on the throne and warned me about a new group that wishes I had been selected instead. Something about a large number of offended Vanir merchants and some several acres of disturbed forest? In any case, I am home now and already working through the backlog of paperwork. I'll have to start again on the Tour of the Realm once I've caught up, but at this point, I think I shall start scheduling it for the halfway mark between announcement and coronation given the amount of delays that keep popping up."

"Delays like you disappearing for a year?" Thor asked.

"Yes, but more frequently you missing meetings with the Jarls or their stewards to finalize one of the stops," Loki answered, his tone sharp. He continued quickly before Thor could argue, "Or one of them getting into an argument with another about who should go where first. The politics behind the two factions are very much in motion and some want one or the other of our opinions on the temperament of the Jarls we have already visited, or to carry our impressions of them on to others."

"Naturally," Mother agreed, "the whole point of such a trip is so they can get the measure of you both. Your opinions of their rivals and friends will speak as much about yourselves as it will about their peers. They do need to stop squabbling over the order they go in like spoilt children, however, and having only one of you asserting any willpower over the proceedings is never going to be sufficient."

"Frigga," Odin said with a sigh, "these things do take time to sort out, but this talk of factions is paranoid nonsense. The realm is united."

"As long as you are on the throne, dear," Mother said, back straight and voice sharp. "You must accept that the nine realms did not stand up as one to cheer the announcement of your successor. It would be unreasonable to expect them to, particularly for places like Nornheim that are only loyal to the throne by the loosest possible definition. It is all a matter of how much testing Thor will face when he takes the throne and how much we can take care of beforehand. Loki's plan to tour the realm is an excellent way to do exactly that, but only if he is involved in it. If Thor continues as he is then the trials he will face upon ascending the throne will multiply a hundredfold."

"I am not the one who disappeared…" Thor tried to defend himself, but Mother held up her hand.

"Yes, you are. You have on seven occasions since your brother left to morn his old Master not been where you said you would be. Are these the sons I raised? A joyful oath-breaker and a self-sacrificing nihilist?" Thor and Loki talked over each other in mutual outrage.

"I'm no oath-breaker!"

"Nihilist? That's extreme hyperbole, and I'm certainly not…"

"Quiet!" Odin boomed. After a moment of silence, he huffed. "The throne room is no place to stand about arguing." The old king stood, his family trailing after him toward the family wing where privacy would be more plentiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is a short one, but I think it gets us from point A to point B so I can start knitting the rest of this together. I generally don't like having a single scene as a chapter unless it is hugely important, but this is a difficult part of the story for me to write. This is a bit of a gap in my draft - that bit that just doesn't fit right between where you are trying to go and where you are so you skipped it and had to come back and fill it in. It is also boring to write purely functional scenes like these when I have so many better things to play with waiting for me in this draft. I wrote most of this arc wildly out of order while I was still working off the old, very heavily edited outline. Please do mention any glaring errors I missed in the Great Retcon of November 2017. 
> 
> No Beta We Die Like Men!


	5. Mother's Needle

Loki stormed through his old chambers in a cloud of ill will and flashing anger. Father and Thor were as unchanged as stone statues, and the four hours they spent talking in circles was an utter waste of time. Mother was too cross about his failure to check in or send a letter home during his long absence to take up his side in anything, so he didn't even get Thor's side of the story for the complete disaster that he'd made out of chasing the bandits out of the sacred forests of Vanaheim. The only additional detail he'd received was that there was no damage done to any of the holy landmarks, but it was a near thing by Mother's estimation and Thor's assurance that it hadn't been so close held as much water as a rusted out colander. He'd felt the sharp twang of Thor's lies down to his bones even though his magic had only just barely been active. That the fool was lying to himself and seemed well on the way to re-writing his own memories only made Loki more infuriated.

Mother wanted to spend some time together tomorrow catching up on gossip and insisted on Loki staying in his old chambers for the night, and he agreed readily enough. He didn't remain to have dinner with her and Father. When Thor left to meet with his friends as he had previously promised to do, Loki'd left to have dinner in the mage hall. Some time with his friends was overdue, after all. The strengthening romance between Brelyna and Alec had made him feel a bit like the fifth wheel on their wagon at times, but they were glad enough to see him whole and hale to welcome his sudden appearance. Amora sat with them for a time, the sarcastic and playful comments tossed around between them a welcome distraction.

There was a new outfit hanging on his bathroom door when he returned to his old rooms. It was no doubt the latest fashion, though he paused and gave it a long look before realizing that it wasn't an Aesir design at all. The more structured layers were clearly cut based on the latest pattern from Vanaheim. Mother would have had to have ordered it made just after Thor came home from his botched mission, no team of seamstresses could have had it ready in the few day's he'd been home. Well, as angry as she was at him she clearly had something in mind that he needed to do to clean up some of the collateral damage, and it always helped smooth things along with the Vassal Lords when Loki showed up dressed to the nines in the latest local fashion. He ran a hand over the fine garments, admiring the tight stitches that created a nearly snake-scale texture.

The pinprick had him jumping back across the room almost before he felt the rush of magic. He raised his defenses, but too late. The spell was crafted well and knew where his weak points were. In a flash it wrapped around something inside him, his finger slowly oozing blood as the sacrifice to give the spell its power. He shouted, a strangled sound startled from his lips with no strength behind it, and fell over onto the floor. Belatedly, he recognized his mother's magic as it swirled and flooded through him. As it faded, he could see what it had done - or more properly undone - and a wave of rage crashed through him. His magic visibly crackled in the air around him.

He had been enchanted again.

The spell had not been strong, but what it lacked in brute strength it made up for in subtlety. Loki sat seething on his bedroom floor trying to figure out what exactly the spell had done for some minutes before the door creaked open. Mother caught the dagger he threw with a shield.

"I expected you to be in a foul mood," she said as she set the old shield aside, the dagger still biting deep into the wood.

"What was that? Who dared do this? How did you know?" Loki asked, his words quick and sharp.

"I suspected something was going on when you stopped going to Eir each season," Mother began, settling onto the floor near Loki and keeping her voice pleasant and even. "The damage to your seidr had not been healing properly before then, as you should know, but when I tried to talk to you about it you became increasingly evasive. I'd thought it was some sort of nervousness or wanting to put it out of mind, a natural reaction to news of a sickness becoming a chronic ailment instead of healing cleanly, but as it went on I worried further. In the days before Tolfdir's passing, may his soul know peace, it seemed that you couldn't remember why I was asking after your health."

"Father nearly killed me," Loki said, shivering a bit as the realization swept through him. "I forgot."

"Indeed." Mother huffed a sigh as she rearranged her skirts to be more comfortable. The thick rug was more comfort than Loki'd had in the abandoned village on Jotunheim, but to see her sit on the floor next to him seemed bizarre. "Can you tell me what was top of mind before, or is it all swept away?" Loki considered taking the out he was offered. Suspicion ripped through him, self-loathing in its wake because Mother didn't deserve such a hostile attitude. She'd been on his side and fighting for his right to live with his body and mind unhindered from the start.

"Does he do this to Thor?" Loki asked to stall while he ordered his thoughts.

"I'm almost afraid to check, but after this confirmation I fear I will have to. You do understand that I do not have the power to detect such things, Loki, and must reach such conclusions after much deliberation."

"Of course I know that," Loki snapped at her. "Even a healer assessing my health would have to think to test for such spells. Mind magics are subtle and elegant by design or else they change the victim so much as to be obvious even to the densest idiot and are quickly undone. I did study the theory after Loralie's attempted coup."

"Only theory?"

"I'd never dabble in such a… a disgusting perversion of magic. If I can't legitimately talk my way around an obstacle, I'll stab my way through via honest means," Loki bit out, enraged at the suggestion. How Odin could practice such things, not just in what could be argued were extreme circumstances but also more casually, bewildered him. Whatever arguments he had with his Father, Odin seemed like a just and good ruler. Such frequent use of mind magic cast everything about a person into doubt by default.

"A well-known truth of such powers is that they are addictive. A not so well-known truth is that those who use such magics are often left vulnerable to them themselves, but of course you were also vulnerable to such things during the beginnings of your training among the Rangers. Eir and I were watchful for a time, but as time passed…" Mother trailed off and looked up at the outfit she'd bought for her son. "I have placed an identical needle in my weaving room and have gotten in the habit of using it before I begin. It cannot dispel any bindings I agreed to be placed upon me - the bonds of matrimony or anything I've done to my hair for example - but for anything placed on an unwilling subject it has seemed to be quite effective."

"Is he…" Loki trained off, needing a moment before asking his Mother a question with such horrific implications, "Is he so much in the habit of using such spells, or am I really so impossible for him to interact with that he can't simply speak with me to resolve things as he does Thor?"

"It is something from his youth," Mother said, but her mouth kept moving for a moment afterward as if she wanted to say more. "I wish I could tell you the full story. The beginnings of it predate our marriage. He has used this power in the past in much less… honorable ways."

"What about this is honorable?" Loki asked, his words little more than an angry hiss.

"He truly believes he is protecting you."

"By making me forget I'd received spell damage from him that nearly killed me twice, once slowly and once by bleeding out, and therefore stopping the treatment that would heal the scars on my seidr properly?"

"I can only guess, because I do not know when the spell was recast, but I must assume that he'd thought your treatment was at an end. I'd like to know why you thought you were cross with him, if not for that, before the spell was removed and if those were legitimate grievances also." Loki paused in contemplation of the request. It was enough of a trespass to block out some of his memory, but weaving in anything new would be doubly horrible. He struggled for enough calm to turn his attention inward and examine his own seidr for what the spell on him had actually done.

"All my grievances with him are well known, or if they weren't Tyr and Njor aired them out in front of the whole council. Nothing fabricated or changed, I don't think. Just… It wasn't that I couldn't remember. I don't think it was that. It made everything that would make me want to change form seem completely irrelevant or unimportant. Even then, and I now understand some of his shock when I told him what I'd done while away, I did still use my changeling abilities and sought to expand those talents. I simply did not think overmuch about… about why I had not already done so or why I was not in top form." It also explained why Prince Moon had treated him like he was made of spun glass so much more than anyone in Tonder ever did. The healer would have told his commanding officer about the scars on Loki's seidr if the Prince couldn't detect them himself when helping Loki with his shape-changing. Certainly, given that Loki had volunteered for examination and they were specifically looking at that part of his magic, they were fully aware of his ailment. Norns, but they had probably asked him about it - they must have - and all he could remember was technical babble about theories too advanced for him by centuries.

"The same he did to Sif, then, targeting the apparent usefulness your abilities. I suppose he forgot how curious you are, how likely to study things that have little to no immediate use, or how passionate you become in your research. At least we caught this early before it could mutate into something malignant." Mother let out a long sigh. "I will have to speak with him."

"Why? If he doesn't know the spell is gone…"

"I will _have to_, Loki," Mother said. Loki shook his head. Mother had mentioned her marriage vows just a moment ago, and the vows binding a war bride would be less permissive than most such assurances of loyalty. It didn't come up often, and Loki knew that was down to Mother loving her husband a great deal and finding the requirements forced upon her to be no great burden, but it was inconvenient in this case. It also seemed to bother her that she would have to break his confidence, so he could forgive her for it.

"Then go and do so, Mother. I won't be pleasant company for a time. May I stick Thor or…?"

"I'll come back for my needle to do it in the morning. Thor is entertaining tonight and it would be difficult to keep any disruption quiet. If I do not, then you may stab Thor after lunch," Mother allowed. "In any case, I did make you something for your birthday, which you really should have returned for however briefly, and you can collect it when you are in a more sociable mood."


	6. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter that occurs entirely within Loki's head. I thought about attaching this to the next part to be a longer chapter, but I think the impact of this moment needed to be its own thing.

Loki's mood was far too low to go out in public lest he break something or someone. Having not fully been in his right mind for an unknown amount of time and therefore in need of backtracking to figure out what he needed to fix, he decided he would spend his evening planning and reassessing his recent actions. Also, dumping out his hiding place in a great heap of mess and sorting through it again would be mildly cathartic. He ordered tea to be served in the main room and promptly filled the floor of his old bedroom with everything that had been hiding in his space between spaces.

He'd done a bit of sorting when he'd come home, as he always did, but aside from not wanting to rely on his judgment while he was enchanted, he also hadn't properly dumped everything after his last few trips. That he had failed to do something that was a habit of his for centuries was a red flag to start with. Right away he was able to see some of the knock-on effects of the mind magic by the state of the clutter. Multiple journals on the same topic with only a dozen or so pages filled clearly showed which things the spell made it difficult for him to keep focused on: shape-shifting; his experiences while in a female body; plans for what he wanted to do with Eldred Hall and the attached lands long term; marriageable ladies his own age he would consider pursuing seriously when the time came; his travels to Jotunheim, Vanaheim, Midgard, and Alfheim over the last few years; some plans for the tour of the realm that would potentially set him up with some of the aforementioned marriageable ladies; and The Box from the future.

Loki scooped his belongings back up and set about having a bath. He had to seek out servants from where they had scattered when the Queen demanded privacy to have the grit and lint from his pocket dimension cleaned away. He reiterated the need for privacy once he'd clarified that he would break his fast with the Queen in her garden and would not require them further until then. With that all settled he stripped down for a long and thoughtful soak. Deep breaths calmed the rage and he set about being more practical and methodical as his mother had so often urged him to be. There was no need (and no body) to strike at with his daggers immediately, so it would all come down to carefully evaluating any vulnerabilities and planning the proper response to this revelation.

So, the enchantment Odin put on him generally affected any plans he made for his future after Thor's coronation, his shape-shifting, and his interest in traveling to other realms. Any goodwill earned by attempting a creative cure for Loki's wanderlust - the most charitable explanation for the spell and the one Odin was most likely to go with - was lost a thousand times over by not asking his permission before testing it on him. The rest of the enchantment's purpose (or unintended consequences thereof) were even more distasteful, with the apparent aim of guiding him away from his own plans and into the role of Thor's vizier. While the rest of his belongings seemed to be in order, the habits of centuries meant he would have to check on those things he had put away or left to be disposed of by his servants after his last few trips. While he hadn't dumped the lot as he ought to, he had discarded things that seemed unimportant to carry around everywhere and with the compulsion to consider certain subjects unimportant he may well have discarded something of real value that he needed to get back. Unfortunately, it was a myth that removing mind magic granted the victim a perfect eidetic memory for everything the spells made them do. That was the hardest part of getting over mind magic: the cleanup of damage and recovery of lost items or relationships after it was broken. Memories that had been repressed may no longer be bound, but they weren't suddenly thrust to the surface either, and the chance of remembering something that wasn't important or noteworthy at the time was in no way affected by how important it was to know in the present moment.

To do this properly he would have to get an untainted view of what he had cast aside, which meant he had only one option. He would have to ask Sven. Loki would prefer, and he was certain Mother would agree, to keep this entire situation in the family and not speak of it where servants could hear. To ask Sven vaguely for the things he discarded to be given back or for an accounting of what was in his garbage several days after the fact without a specific lost item in mind that he was looking for would be difficult. He could not think of anything other than "I may have misplaced something, what was cleared out after I cleaned out my traveling supplies?" which would lead the very well trained and attentive servant wanting more details. Perhaps Loki could claim a touch of delirium from dehydration or some other hardship? He had lost a significant amount of weight while away. Not a startling amount, thanks to regular trips to restock his provisions that had him eating calorie-rich foods full of honey or cheese during his stay in the frozen cloud of entropy that is Jotunheim. Up until the time he spent with Prince Moon, at least, then he started eating their oily fish and… whatever the magenta noodly-root looking things were, but it was enough lost weight to be noticed. It would be wildly out of character to simply admit he did not know what he was missing, but perhaps that was a good angle to play anyway? He could say he felt like he was missing something important but could not put his finger on what. It would be a difficult thing to ask of Sven from the start, to find his masters lost unknown item, though he was certain the man would do the job both well and quietly, but he did not want the other servants to talk.

Perhaps the answer was the problem. Once enchantment caused the problem, another could help him clean it up. Loki was an illusionist. He could claim he had been trying to make something for his mother and the enchantment went awry, making several of his valued belongings appear like uninteresting garbage to his own eyes. A mistake due to fatigue and stress, no doubt, quite understandable given a year of hard labor building a bridge while morning the loss of a cherished mentor. Yes, that was the angle. It would be a simple thing to plant a 'botched' spell on a couple of his duplicate journals and explain that he worried there would be other items he could not properly identify.

Well, if only he could sort out how he could speak to his father without wanting to leap at him and stab him in the chest repeatedly the whole issue would be done with. That was not quite true. He would only need to avoid Odin at the risk of committing patricide if Thor was also enchanted. He may well seek out his father and take the entire thing into the public forum if Thor's blundering about was symptom of a brain addled by more than too much drink and too many sycophant friends.

That felt… odd to think about. Perhaps if he had not… but they were well past would haves and should haves, weren't they? Loki had wanderlust - diagnosed properly by experts on the subject. He'd had plenty of time to think about it, to think about the things Tyr and Njor said and suggested, to think about Tolfdir's words and what they meant to him and about his family, and even to sit quietly with Geri and Freki to listen to his own soul's desires and the will of the Norns speaking through the fabric of magic itself. He did not feel as strongly about the betrayal as he might have done because his father had already proven himself… unworthy of it? Certainly untrustworthy, but perhaps unworthy in a more general sense as well. Even the enchantment he'd placed on Loki, no doubt with the underlying purpose and intent of making him do as his father wished he would do, had not worked because he did not know Loki's mind well enough to craft the spell into the proper shape. Odin simply did not know him well enough to know what motivated him to act as he did. It was strangely freeing, as if a great burden had been lifted off his shoulders.

He did not want to please Odin.

He felt no need to seek his favor.

He was loyal to the crown, yes, but to the man himself - for the sake of a connection to the man who sired him - Loki felt nothing.

There were tears on his face, streaming down like twin rivers, but he could not have said why.


	7. Realignment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is one chapter where I wish I could set the blockquote to a different font. The letter in my Scrivener document is in the Harrington font, which is a delicate and precise Serif lettering that brings a lot of personality to the document. The rest of it is in a bland sans-serif. The blockquote style does a good job, but if I could make the text dark red and more formal I would.

Sleep was not going to come to him easily, so Loki might as well get back to work. Missing a single night's rest wouldn't bother him and he had entirely too much to think about. Sitting in front of the fireplace in his front room Loki pulled out The Box from the future and re-read the letter his future self had written. It was always disturbing to look at and he had to admit that any spell to turn his eye from unseemly things wouldn't have much work to do to get him to put it out of mind. Would it be better to think that it had come from some alternative world? That the creature that unmade himself enough to utilize the magics involved was from some other time line, running parallel to his own and long since parted with his reality? It was a comforting thing, but the weave of fate could always bind the disparate threads into a single channel again. A universe where he preferred yellow more than green would not function any differently than his own, after all… and now he was just stalling.

> If we wish for death, think of mother. Go to her at first opportunity and extract a hug. Yes, this time also.

The specifics in the letter still made little sense, but it was important to him that he refreshed his understanding of the advice he'd given himself from time to time. Especially the part about treating his suicidal thoughts with Mother's presence. He could admit that they required treatment, at least to himself. Properly accepting that he had some sort of mental illness or chronic spell damage had required several years and the re-framing of certain things in his life. Tolfdir had been there to talk him through moving out of the palace and restructuring his life around the things he enjoyed (as mother had instructed) and helped him set achievable goals both short and long term. Tolfdir, Tyr, and Njor had all told him on occasion that he was falling on his sword for the good of the realm unnecessarily in his political maneuvering, and while Loki did not think they knew that he thought about actually dying in a moment of glory as a better fate than continuing his life as it was, they certainly knew something wasn't right. None had called it out as mental illness until he'd gone to Jotunheim, and Tyr and Njor had not spoken of it directly at all until after he'd gotten the box. Something about his changed behavior had led them to approach him on the subject - if only in the most gentle terms and framed as necessary for the good of the realm. That they kept at it and increased their efforts as he improved told him that he may, possibly, not that he would ever admit such a thing, have appeared to be beyond help or unwilling to accept it even if offered in the most delicate terms in years past.

> Terrible things happen to the minds of sorcerers who tamper with time. We already have our plans, but I know how they fail. You must find a way to **win**.
> 
> …
> 
> We will **NEVER** match Thor by picking up a hammer and swinging it around. Stop acting like this is even the remotest possibility. We are flexible, and fast, and full of so much magic we could **unmake the worlds**. Study magic voraciously with or without purpose, but_ do not neglect martial training._ We were raised a warrior, and we can _FIND YOUR OWN WAY_.

The Grandmaster and General supporting him in his efforts to get out from under his father's thumb to find his own way in life - an impossible task to be fully successful in as long as Odin held the throne, but one he had thought he was making good strides in - was a great help and he owed the older men a great deal for their efforts both today and over the previous years. Even if he'd failed as spectacularly as possible in assisting Tyr with handling Sif's situation, the Grandmaster had continued to invite Loki to dine with him in his home (which he accepted provided Sif was not home at the time) even when there was no pressing business to discuss. He and Njor even invited him to smaller meetings with other council members to get 'a young man's perspective' on various proposals and refine them before presenting them to the King's Council.

> Know your enemy better than you know yourself. We must not suffer preventable ignorance.

He invited many people to Eldred Hall for many reasons. His birthday party had become a truly magnificent event. He solidified old acquaintances as long-distance friends, smoothed ruffled feathers, and collected lots of gossip all in one week of partying. The first night was a big formal bash as always, but the impromptu low key after-party with his old shield-brothers became an official and expected part of the event. It didn't last nearly as long, usually only a day or two, but even more of the guests he wanted to spend time with stayed which let him spend more time handling the people he needed to deal with or influence during their brief attendance. Alec had started attending the after party as well. Aside from enjoying himself immensely, it kept him up to date on most everything going on elsewhere in Asgard. That his focus was so dedicated to only Asgardian affairs would have to change - likely he could blame that on the mind magic - as it would not do to neglect potential threats or information from their vassal states or even from trade partners like Nidevellier or the more independent and insular moons of Alfheim.

> Do things personally, suffer no lackadaisical moments, but respect experts. Collect them like precious gems.

Loki had certainly been collecting experts - Eldred Hall nearly always had a guest room or two filled these days by those wanting to study the amphitheater. Several sorceresses specializing in the finding of legal truths had been among the parade of researchers and he had, without any official promotion that would grant him higher status or public announcement, gathered two of them to handle some of the more hands-on and tedious work of examining evidence samples. He assumed, and made sure others did the same, that his place a Prince alloted him the necessary seniority to employ them and paid them a modest retainer out of his own funds. He assigned them the use of his equipment in the palace lab. Though highly skilled, their families had not had the funds to send them to live in Gladsheim during their apprenticeship and they had instead come to work for Lawmen in smaller courts. They were both very happy to be working in the capital city and, as both were displeased with the cramped dormitory in the Mage's wing they were forced to lodge in until they found some other apartment, immediately set about hunting for a merchant-class husband. He wished them luck. While Loki still did work as a prosecutor and sought truth for certain legal matters brought before the court, and he did miss the moment of joyous accomplishment that came when he watched the evidence distill down to irrefutable facts that condemned the guilty, he simply couldn't keep up with the workload. He'd been requested for more cases than usual for a few seasons after word of his exoneration of Jarl Liam's son got around and Odin had asked him to accept most of them. Besides, other duties had taken up a larger portion of his schedule since he'd moved out and delegating the legwork made his schedule much more flexible. Not that it was much more likely he could join a war game with two hours notice than he could have before hiring them, but there was at least the possibility that if something was sprung on him like that again he could take advantage of some portion of the situation instead of being victim to it.

Many others that studied the ancient structure had left their calling cards with him, and he would have to look at branching out to collect experts from other fields. If not as employees, then at least as friendly acquaintances that owed him some measure of favor. There was precious little in the letter to suggest what types of experts would be useful in whatever there was to come, so he would have to take an eclectic approach. Just as well that he liked a diverse crowd of intellectuals at a party.

> The cursed/convergence will take our mother's life. We will be mad by then if we are failing. We will eventually remember all ourselves in all our fragmented pieces of **infinity**, and eventually write this letter.

The only truly clear hint of a future event was Mother's death. Allowing that to come to pass was unimaginable. He'd looked at that section of the large parchment more than any other, studying it intently. He tried to find any trace of the words that had been scrubbed off the letter, but the large blank spaces around the passage revealed nothing. He had to accept that in this version of reality, those words had never been written. That would have to be a good thing. Too many details would mean that those details were locked - facts from the letter's past that it could not change - which reduced his options. He had started looking into the convergence, but set all of that aside in favor of more immediate and Odin-approved fascinations. Information about the event was scarce in the palace library, which was very odd for an event that happened nine or ten times in an average Asgardian lifetime. It was a security concern that required their protective shields to be engaged on their highest setting, and there was a little bit of information as to the mechanics of how and why Yggdrasil's branches convulsed during the alignment, but not much more than that.

> When we fell, we became a puppet. DO NOT PLAY along. Lie low and find loopholes! Lie and cheat and manipulate until the puppeteer is dead. Enemies and allies are so easily fluid titles, but we are a servant of Yggdrasil. Alternatively, DO NOT FALL off the Bifrost, unless certain death awaits us. Remember, if we fail, we must write this letter.
> 
> Phillip Coulson is a man to talk to, if you have the time, if everything is wrong.

A puppet. Loki hadn't understood much if anything about this part of the letter the first time he'd read it. He'd developed theories, of course, each more fanciful and unlikely as the next. With the mind magic… no, no, not just that. With the repeated use of such skills on him by Odin and Mother and the reaction Odin had to Loki acting contrary to the directives even in the preservation of his own life and sanity… the identity puppeteer was obvious. Odin was old. A directive to lie low, putting his effort into manipulations from the shadows and skirting around the Allfather to reach his goals until the man died was certainly _a_ strategy. Not the sort he'd embrace as a first choice, certainly. He'd already been finding loopholes in the mind magic to do as he wished even when he was so completely blinkered by the spells he might as well be pulling a cart along a well-marked path and eating oats from a feed bag. Perhaps two centuries, perhaps a bit longer, and he'd be free of the invisible cage of magic Odin wove around him for good. He could take the warning as a sign that he should just pack up and find some more distant place to wait it out while studying some advanced thing or another until the clock ran out, refusing to play the game at all. Except, the convergence would certainly happen well before Odin died of old age. It would only be a short time after Thor takes the throne at a time when Odin would still be counseling Thor heavily. Even if he did take himself off the playing field he would have to return for Thor's coronation and remain for the convergence, and in that situation he'd have burnt any good will and Odin would possibly saddle him with enough mind magic to break him again. To fall from the Bifrost into the endless void of space between worlds would be a slow death via asphyxiation at best, but it might be preferable to… even slower and more horrible things. Things that he now had a few ideas about that would certainly haunt his nightmares. The implied threat both to himself and to Mother was not to be ignored.

The real question was: Could he be that patient? Could he put his entire life on hold, or sneak about in the shadows to get what he needed for the things he couldn't put off? His health was a garbage fire; he looked healthy and had his strength, but the scars on his seidr were just below the surface. Over the four years since he moved to Eldred Hall he had neglected the instructions Eir had given him more and more until he'd stopped treatment altogether. The deterioration in his health was obvious once he performed the necessary scans to look for it. Cracks in the foundation waiting to shatter him if struck with just the right resonance, and the short list of things that could happen during the convergence to cause Mother's death that he had made were all magical in nature and likely to bring him down hard. The chronic pain that he'd been living with so long that he hadn't even _registered_ it until he'd felt relief was back, though not quite as bad as it had been. The way the spells tugged at his mind to make him forget or ignore what Odin had done ensured he hadn't remembered what it felt like to be free from the constant low-level aches, but now he did and could see why some people believed ignorance was a sort of bliss. Like ladies who painted their faces to cover a bruise, the problems were hidden but not healed and rough handling would cause additional damage easily. Beyond that, he wasn't terribly patient. Twenty decades felt like an intolerable amount of time to hamstring himself and put off doing the things he wanted to do. Yet, he was also instructed to not play along, or perhaps just not to play. Could he skirt Odin until the man's death by being a certain brand of ruthless: a liar, cheat, and manipulator that took what he needed because open action was impossible? He didn't want to lean into the Liesmith moniker he'd been saddled with. The freedom he felt on Jotunheim to do and say whatever he wanted with the blunt honesty expected of a child and receive honest and well-intentioned advice in return was the main thing that drew him back to that realm - though Midgard and the more remote parts of Alfheim offered similar opportunities for anonymity.

As first dawn broke, the only things he was completely sure about were the need to make an appointment with Eir, his trust in Mother, and the creeping horror of likely failure. His eyes lingered on the desperate pleas written in blood from several alternate versions of himself who suffered in some other reality, begging him to avoid their fate.

> SURVIVE. We have a reason for chaos now. WIN. Fight for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I streamed some "editing" of this story over at https://www.twitch.tv/sofiadragon which was actually just me talking out a lot of stuff about the story and working through the headspace of stitching a story arc I wrote for "A Timely Warning" into a part of the story that happens 8 years later because the continuity issues are legion.
> 
> I'm going to do that on Friday nights for a while, starting September 11th. It was fun even though I didn't get much done and it worked great as a prewriting exercise. Lots of ideas!

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are beloved, but you can also talk to me on discord: https://discord.gg/auKf8vZ


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